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Interview with LONGi Solar President Dr. Zhenguo Li

LONGiPosted on 2018-10-17

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pv magazine: Right after the SNEC trade show in May of this year
many market participants were surprised by the new China central government
policy to limit subsidy support for PV installations. What is LONGi
Solar’s view of
this new policy and how has the market changed since this policy was announced?

Zhenguo Li: Even without this 5/31
policy change, the market will not be that different than before. We can give
you an example. The solar industry, is like most industries - once the industry
gets mature, consolidation needs to happen.

Meaning that the technology evolves. The multi-wafer price collapsed before
this policy change. So this new policy change caused short-term issues for most
companies, including us. We will face the pressure of profit. But for the long
term, it will not change our position in the industry.

pv magazine: Another question on policy: The European Commission
recently announced its intention to discontinue the Minimum Import Price (MIP)
for imported modules. How will this affect LONGi
Solar’s business in Europe? What
opportunities present themselves?

Li: This will have a positive impact. LONGi
Solar
has set up an ambitious target for the
EU market. The removal of the MIP allows LONGi
Solar to better serve the EU market by
providing high performance new generation products that are currently manufactured
in our China facilities. At the same time the removal of the MIP will also
allow renewable energy costs to reduce dramatically. That will help motivate
stronger market demand than expected.

pv magazine: When I spoke with you at Intersolar North America, you
provided some thoughts on the market share that you expect for mono and
multicrystalline silicon in 2018 and 2019. Have there been any developments in
the last two months that have changed your perspective to any degree, and can
you comment on the price trends that you are seeing for wafers?

Li: First off, it takes time to figure
out the shift. Some projects were designed based on multicrystalline and they
cannot change the module design. But today almost everyone realizes that mono
is the future. So once people reach this conclusion, this change can happen
really fast.
I can give you an example based on diamond wire cutting. 2017 was the first
year when diamond wire cutting was first adopted. By 2018, the percentage might
be 40%. In 2022, diamond wire may be 100%.

That was the conclusion back in 2017. In reality, in 2018, diamond
wire adoption is 100%. It happened faster than anyone expected.

Today most people have reached the conclusion that mono will replace
multi. So that will happen must faster in the next one or two years.

The percentage of mono depend on the market scale and capacity. Next
year we believe the mono wafer capacity will be anything between 70 to 80 GW.
So if the market scale is only 100 GW, then let’s say mono will be 70%. If
market goes beyond expectation to 150 GW, then multi & mono will be 50/50.
Because we are temporarily limited by the supply of mono wafers.

pv magazine: Can you speak to the progress of LONGi
Solar’s capacity
expansions? Are you on track to reach 25 GW of ingot and wafer production by
the end of this year, and to reach 45 GW by the end of 2020?

Li: There is no change for our expansion
progress. But to be exact, today we are already sitting at 25 GW. End of this
year, wafer will be 28 GW. End of next year, 36 GW. End of 2020, 45 GW. That is
the original plan. No change.

pv magazine: It has been clear that getting multiple pulls out of a
single crucible through the rechargeable CZ process has been key for LONGi
Solar’s
success in the ingot and wafer sector. I see that in August you signed a
development with Aiko Solar based on continuous CZ technology. What are your
thoughts on rechargeable CZ versus Continuous CZ, and which technology will
ultimately become dominant?

Li: Our R&D for Continuous CZ (CCZ)
started in 2011 and the study was closed in 2015. Last year in our annual
report, we pointed that LONGi has a thorough understanding of CCZ technology.
But the reason that we have not used it for mass production is that we believe
that Rechargable CZ (RCZ) is more competitive.

For CCZ, there are two challenges. The first is the feedstock. The
feedstock of the granular poly still has powder and hydrogen issues. They have
to improve the process to remove hydrogen in the powder.

Second is the crucible. CCZ needs to use a double crucible
structure, but the cost today is very high.

Those are the two issues for CCZ. If industry can fix these two
issues, we can do CCZ overnight. Because all of the machines that we have are
compatible with both RCZ and CCZ since 2015.

pv magazine: To follow up on that, since you have this JV with Aiko
solar, do you think that these challenges to CCZ are something that can be
fixed?

Li: The joint development projects with
Aiko is to find out if CCZ can bring more value to the end user. Meaning if CCZ
can bear higher cost than RCZ. It is not a technology issue, because we have
the technology already.